Purple Reigns in SoHo

By

David Shapiro

Updated March 24, 2013 10:34 p.m. ET

"I think I'm a bigger Prince fan than Touré or anyone else in this room!" said hip-hop DJ and producer DJ Premier, posted up against a shelf of nonfiction books in the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in SoHo on Friday evening.

"One time, in 1996, Prince told me he was a fan of my group and I almost fainted," added the ordinarily stoic DJ Premier, cracking a smile.

Hundreds of die-hard Prince fans packed Housing Works for an all-Prince dance party celebrating the release of "I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Became an Icon," the new book on Prince by author Touré, who also co-hosts a show on MSNBC.

Looking out over the rollicking crowd from the store's second-floor mezzanine, Touré, wearing a purple velvet tie for the occasion, recounted some of the joys and frustrations of writing about Prince.

ENLARGE

Music was spun by Ali Shaheed Muhammad from A Tribe Called Quest
Cassandra Giraldo for The Wall Street Journal

"In 1998, I interviewed Prince for a story," said Touré. "He doesn't allow interviewers to take any notes now, but back then, he would allow you to write out your notes longhand. The problem with that is that you can't get everything, because he speaks in this incredibly florid, almost Shakespearean way. I would look back at my notes afterwards and not know what they meant!"

The book began as a series of three one-hour lectures that Touré delivered at Harvard, but Touré added several months of research and writing to those lectures.

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Joe Levy
Cassandra Giraldo for The Wall Street Journal

"One of the most surprising things I learned about Prince while I was researching the book came from Dez Dickerson, an original member of Prince's band," Touré said. "Dickerson said that very early in Prince's career, he sat his band down and said to them, 'Okay, all of us need to have a thing. My thing is pure sex. You each need to think about what your thing is.'"

A handful of Touré's colleagues from MSNBC came out to support the author and, of course, to cut a rug. Standing by the bar next to the Nation's Ari Melber, MSNBC contributor Jimmy Williams explained that Touré had written an amazing book about Prince and then took a moment to fondly recall a high-school date.

"I remember taking a girl named Missy Higgs to see 'Purple Rain.' We had such a great time," he said nostalgically.

Joy-Ann Reid, another MSNBC contributor, noted that she grew up listening to Prince. "I thought I was a true Prince fan, but Touré's book brought out aspects of the music that I totally missed. It's easy to miss the spirituality."

Touré invited Ali Shaheed Muhammad, the DJ from legendary 1990's rap group A Tribe Called Quest, to spin an all-Prince set. "DJing all Prince songs gets a little challenging after two-and-a half-hours," he admitted. Mr. Muhammad was eager to detail his own run-in with the Purple One.

"In 1991 or 1992, he booked A Tribe Called Quest to play in Minneapolis. We didn't get to meet him then, but a couple years later, he was playing in New York and he invited us to his after-after-show," explained Mr. Muhammad.

"The after-after-show," he said again. "You know Prince has a history of playing nonstop music."

Gloria Echeverry Martinez, who got Prince's "love symbol" tattooed on her shoulder when she was 22 (and wore a dress proudly exposing the tattoo), spent the evening in ecstasy.

"Prince is my favorite everything," she said. "The only thing I regret about this tattoo is that the purple is not as bright as it used to be," she said, laughing, before returning to the dance floor.

Yusef Salaam, one of the subjects of the 2012 documentary "The Central Park Five," was taking in Mr. Muhammad's DJ set in the back of the store when technical difficulties cut the music out for about thirty seconds.

"Oh no! Not on this song! This is 'Adore.' This is one of the best Prince songs," said Mr. Salaam. Luckily for Mr. Muhammad, the crowd picked up where Prince left off and erupted into a singalong.

At the end of the night, Mr. Muhammad took the microphone and summed up the party: "We turned this bookstore out!"

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